Carmel Snow had said, “I saw a fresh, new conception of layout technique that struck me like a revelation: pages that “bled” beautifully cropped photographs, typography and design that were bold and arresting. Within ten minutes I had asked Brodovitch to have cocktails with me, and that evening I signed him to a provisional contract as art director” It was proved an imaginative and revolutionary decision. After an intense period of twenty five years of making the magazine world famous for design and photography, Snow left as editor and he was sent away.

Apart from the influence of his teaching and his personal photography, the major aspect of Alexey Brodovitch’s work that has had a lasting influence on photography was his work as the influential Art Director of Harpers Bazaar magazine from 1934-1958. He reinvented to look of magazines.

The new look of Harper’s Bazaar emphasized culture for its own sake. Taking advantage of Brodovitch’s contacts in Europe and his knowledge of photography, the magazine introduced the work of many artists and photographers new to an American audience including Jean Cocteau, Raoul Dufy, Leonor Fini, Lisette Model, Marc Chagall, Bill Brandt, Man Ray and poster artist A. M. Cassandre.

LOWER MANHATTAN SKYLINE

The Managing Editor of Harper’s Bazaar (Frances MacFadden) explained his working method:

“It was a pleasure to watch him work. He was so swift and sure. In emergencies, like the time the Clipper bearing the report of the Paris Collections was held up in Bermuda, his speed was dazzling. A quick splash or two on the cutting board, a minute’s juggling of the photostats, a slather of art gum, and the sixteen pages were complete.

               This disease of our age is boredom… The way to combat this is by invention – by surprise. When I say a good picture has surprise value, I mean that it stimulates my thinking and intrigues me.                                                                        -Alexey Brodovitch

His layouts, of course, were the despair of copywriters whose cherished tone poems on girdles or minks had to be sacrificed to his sacred white space. Just before we went to press, all the layouts were laid out in sequence on Carmel Snow’s floor, and there, under his eye, re-arranged until the rhythm of the magazine suited him.” From these, each spread would be made one at a time, then arranged among the others to create a well-paced magazine.

“His style for the magazine was radically different, then and now.While the vogue for fashion magazines was to show the whole garment, Brodovitch would radically crop images or place them off-center in a layout to bring fresh dynamism to the spread.”

BAZAAR COVER

BROADWAY BOOGIE WOOGIE

Not having saved any money, Brodovitch tried free lance work, but his many clients would not accept his ‘my way or the highway’ work, brilliant and innovative as it might be. I remember a client coming to his apartment and requesting minor changes. He came back the next day and Brodovitch said, “Vell this is what you wanted,” and showed him the same designs. He had exquisite taste and an instinct for the choreography of images as seen in his great book of Avedon’s portraits of famous people, Observations, Portfolio and the many issues of Harper’s Bazaar. His short lived series of graphic art magazines, Portfolio.became an icon for art directors and graphic designers.

The picture represents the feelings and point of view of             the intelligence behind the camera. –Alexey Brodovitch

In the sixties, I recorded him and his many well known visitors talking to students using a cheap recorder. Brodovitch’s low voice with its thick Russian accent was difficult to understand. The recordings that I made have been reengineered and are are now available to hear at R.I.T.’s graphic design library in Rochester, New York. The decade was a pivoting point in the almost two hundred year history of photography. Penn, Avedon and many other well known photographers and graphic designers came and expressed bafflement at where to go next with their still film ocameras. Brodovitch said, “Vell, you must follow Gagarin and rocket into the future vit the Russian space mission.” These rocket’s engines blasted brilliant light and an infernal radiance into the Design Laboratory workshops.

BROADWAY, NYC

            Surprise quality can be achieved in many ways. It may be produced by a certain stimulating geometrical relationship between elements in the picture or through the human interest of the situation photographed or by calling our attention to some commonplace but  fascinating thing we have never noticed before or it can be        achieved by looking at an everyday thing in a new interesting way. —Alexey Brodovitch

Forty years later my work with the gifted, intuitive, creative artist/photographer Ivana Lovincic,Breaking the Light post abstract impressionist and abstract expressionist images emerge began as he challenged us to reinvent the art of still photography (www.harveylloyd.com). Each abstract image was made during a single exposure in my digital camera. As Ivana Lovincic who works with me and named the new art Breaking the Light said, “He (Brodovitch) planted seeds for the future.”

There were Kandinsky, modern art and the New York School of Abstract Expressionists before, but no one had used a camera as a paint brush to do what Picasso said, “I do not paint what I see. I paint what I Imagine.” Only Brodoviitch before our own Breaking the Light break out of traditional still film technique and had in the thirties when Brodovitch made his famous Ballet Book out of blurred images of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and other ballet company performances in NYC.

According to one colleague, his images “spat in the face of technique and pointed out a new way in which photographers could work.”He made no other book of his own photography. It was an early beginning of the earth shaking new way of seeing with a camera and roundly criticized. Near the end, when I (Lloyd) had him drying out at Riker’s Island, Brodovitch received a small Minox camera from an old student, Ben Rose visiting him. He slipped the camera in an old box of Pall Mall cigarettes and discreetly began to photograph his fellow patients.

The series of bizarre black and white images of mentally disturbed patients became the opening section of the hour long CD with basso singing of the Russian Orthodox Church music, and narration in French and English of Brodovitch’s life and magazine work “Brodovitch,” It was made for an international photography festival in Arles, France. The festival director hated it and Brodovitch, and said the audiences here were unruly and would tear down the screen. They loved and it and stood up and applauded loudly after each section.

Brodovitch’s mind remained sharp and indomitable, true to his beliefs during those last years in New York City as during his entire career. It was the greatest privilege to take care of him and to learn from him. He loved New York and I had to make him leave to go to his brother in France, as he was wasting away near the end. I think we were both heartbroken, Brodovitch because he loved his New York, myself because he meant so very much to me. His like will not be seen again.